Search Animals

[JohnLeeroy]

Add filter controls to ListActivity.
Filter by:

• breed
• gender
• species

[RFonzi]

Ideas:

Primary

• Search by categories (animal, breed, size, sex)
• Has to be a real search bar
• Search results in new view

Secondary

• Autocomplete keywords (need mockups)
• Valid synonyms

Thoughts
How to handle scenarios like "cat dog" (be proactive or reactive?)

[ToxicBakery]

Do we really think anyone is going to search by text? How many results do we get currently in a filterless search? I feel like I remember we looked at this before and for a zip code, 100 animals would be a 'big' zip code so after applying even two filters you have already narrowed your search down to typically far less than 10 animals.

Do we have an example where this is no the case and a text-based search would be beneficial?

[JohnLeeroy]

@RFonzi and I talked about this and we agreed that if we were to use filters instead of text search, there would be too many filters to account for. The number of results is less relevant than making the interface in which the user will search/filter easy to use and we think that search by text is the direction we want to go in. If we have some mocks or can intuitively design a filtering system that isn't cumbersome, we can consider that option.

[ToxicBakery]

We don't really need to provide that many filters though right? Actually I'm not even sure that filtering at all is desirable. It seems the primary use case would be to get animals adopted and filters and search can encourage a user to be picky and miss animals they may want to adopt had they not over eagerly filtered them out.

Going back a step, how many animals come back typically when you search by the animal type (cat/dog/horse/whatever)

[JohnLeeroy]

I tried 100 to 1000 in my area and it'll return the amount requested but the area in which it sources pets are also expanded to fulfill the desired number. With my search at 1000, I am getting results from cities like Clermont, Titusville, St Cloud, etc.

I definitely think search/filter is a necessary feature. I'll use myself as a usecase. I'm allergic to 9/10 cat breeds and I am knowledgeable on breeds I am not allergic to so I would want to search for those breeds. As for dogs, I live in an apartment where I can only consider small dogs. There are scenarios where the animal choice is dictated by factors outside of personal preference.